Is Tendulkar using a lighter bat?

This may seem too trivial to point out right now, but this question had been raised by some journalists at Kirsten, the Indian coach, and it seems that the answer to the question is a big, Yes. The thing is that Tendulkar had been plagued by many back and shoulder injuries in the last two-to-three years and many experts believed that his extremely thick bat, given his size and height limitation combined with the amount of cricket he was playing was a major reason for this. However, Tendulkar always refuted such theories and the runs kept coming-off his heavyweight bat carrying the MRF signature. It was during 2009 that Tendu had a change of sponsors and MRF exited and may be this was the reason that prompted Tendu to change his bat. He is now batting with an Adidas bat and it seems that this piece of lumber is much lighter than what he was using before. The results are evident in the way he is approaching the short-pitched ball, overcoming it with tender footwork and just dabbing upon it rather than playing those cracking, lifted off-drives. In fact, he seems to be getting more comfortable with merely pushing at the ball in vacant spots on the field and taking twos and threes, not that his boundary-scoring ability has suffered in any way, but his entire body language is more fluent than before, particularly the way he is playing delicate late-cuts around the third-man region. I feel that if he could replace those century-old pads of his, more weight would be lifted off his body, adding to his overall durability...now that such questions are bound to arise. I know, this sounds a bit too intrusive and talking about things that may seem insignificant but then cricket is 50% Tendulkar to me so obsessing over him is beyond my control.